Too Much Talk On The Lot

I was actually looking forward to the TV show On The Lot. I imagined it would be another shot at a great TV show concept like Project Greenlight. That was an absolutely outstanding show that HBO really shouldn't have killed.

But then again, maybe I enjoy watching shows on film making more than the average joe.

But it is so ironic that a show about good film making has such terrible pacing and awful storytelling. The show seems focused on talk, talk, and more talk. The attempts at building "tension" are old hat and a poor copy of Survivor, Apprentice, and American Idol. It's as if the producers of this show assumed that no one would watch more than one episode.

The relatively annoying host of the show keeps recapping what the show is about over and over and over again (and then over again after that). It is like they assume that anyone watching the show at any point has just walked in and has no idea what the show is about. Or, that the target audience is a group of amnesiacs or have serious short-term memory problems like the guy in Memento. She recaps the purpose of the show, the bios of the directors, the films that they shot, the reactions of the judges, and everything else in between. The amount of new content in each episode is laughably small and you really have to be dedicated or a heck of an optimist to tune in to the show again.

Lack of originality, poor scripting, boring writing, failure to use innovative visuals. While this sounds like the judges comments, it is what I would say about the show. Perhaps it's time the judges critiqued the filming and pacing of this show for one episode.

Another great opportunity to make a great show about film making lost. The brilliant Hollywood types are going to assume that it is the genre that cannot succeed instead of blaming the production values of this show.

Sad.

And why don't we just give the award to Zach Lipovsky now and get it over with?